


shooting for the stars when i couldn't make a killing

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Big Brother Shiro (Voltron), Brotherly Love, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mentioned Shiro/Adam, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 20:43:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15614616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "So maybe it’s good that he’s getting signed up for a big brother. He can have some real family again. He likes the idea."Or, A study of Keith-and-Shiro, Shiro-and-Keith, unofficial brothers (and later brothers in arms).





	shooting for the stars when i couldn't make a killing

**Author's Note:**

> hey i hate sheith i HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT so here's some broganes fluff! there may be some inaccuracies in ages/when keith went to the garrison/etc bc i feel like s7 will give us more history that'll invalidate this whole thing but we'll see 
> 
> dedicated to the gc who i rant about sheith on the daily with <3 some ogs 
> 
> i hope you enjoy!

The same day Keith loses his second tooth and finds a cool frog in the grasses around the orphanage and forgets his hat in the cafeteria, some kid knocks him down before his official meeting with his foster brother.

He doesn’t think foster brother is the right word. He’s not going to live with him—apparently he and Keith are just going to hang out a lot, talk, go bowling (he really hopes they go bowling) and other fun stuff so they can become friends, which is good, because Keith isn’t really good at making friends. Sometimes the other kids are scared of him, which sucks, but there’s nothing he can do about it.

Other people can do something about it, though, apparently, because Miss Hodson tells him that he and a few other of the more _difficult_ kids were signed up to partner with some group that gives them big brothers and big sisters, which is cool, because it’s a friend and a sibling all at once. Keith used to want siblings, and he called his old dog his big sister until she passed away. But it was okay, because he still had his dad, but then his dad died and he got stuck in here.

So maybe it’s good that he’s getting signed up for a big brother. He can have some real family again. He likes the idea. There would be enough activity in his life as is, just with the promise that he’s going to have a little bit of family again, but he loses his canine and scrapes his knee and he forgets a little bit, that he’s going to have a big brother.

He’s excited but it dulls. His knee scraped against an open floorboard and he bites his lip to keep from crying and puts his hand over it, and stretches out his legs and sits down on the floorboards, which are creaky and brown like dirt or mud he’s not allowed to play in anymore because Miss Vaughan and her husband yelled at him for doing that once, in his old foster home, the one where he thought he’d have a big brother but he just kind of ignored Keith like everyone does so he didn’t.

He didn’t mind because he was used to it, but that was a breaking point, a little, because he never wanted to be in a foster home again. He didn’t want people to ignore him in that way that made him get stomach aches that went up to his head when he wasn’t paying attention, so he always had to pay attention. He bets every family is like the Vaughan, so he can just live in the orphanage a little until he doesn’t anymore.

His knee stops bleeding so he starts to stand up, and thinks about going in the other direction to get a bandaid instead, because all of this thought about the Vaughans reminds him that it’s very possible that his new big brother will just hate him and get into it all for money or something, which he hates. He likes all of his other thoughts better.

But he doesn’t go the other way, because he’s not scared. He starts to dust himself off and stand up, but right then, a tall boy with black hair rounds around the corner, whistling some breathy tune but abruptly stopping when he sees Keith.

“Hey there, little dude,” he says, and Keith makes a face at him but doesn’t say anything. He’s scared his knee is going to start bleeding again. The boy comes closer, smiles like he means it, and crouches down in front of Keith. His hand is cold and he touches Keith’s knee. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m not little.”  
  
He gives an abrupt laugh. “My mistake, then,” he says. “I spoke wrong. I’m little. I’m really short for my age.”  
  
“You don’t look short,” Keith notes, and the boy laughs again, very heartily. He looks like he wants to do everything he does over and over again. He stands up and looks over Keith’s head, searching. “Well, to you I don’t,” he says. “But to other people I do. Taller people. I bet they’re much taller to you than I am.”  
  
“Duh,” Keith says. “My dad is really tall. I hope that means I’ll be tall, too.”  
  
“Being tall is boring,” the boy says, wrinkling his nose. He doesn’t elaborate, which Keith likes, because he gets to think of why himself.

“They probably hit their head a lot,” Keith comments. He remembers—for the first time in a long time—how his father always hit his head on the bathroom door frame and complained that his bruise there was basically permanent. He smiles a little. There’s not many of those left. The happy ones.

“Are you short for your age? I can’t tell,” the guy asks. 

“No,” Keith responds. “I’m average.”  
  
“Hey, me too,” the boy says, and puts out his hand for a high-five. Hesitating for a second, Keith claps his hand against his, and then takes it away fast and hides it at his side. He’s smiling very wide, so wide his cheeks hurt so he stops, and sees Miss Hodson chattering out of the counselling room around the corner.

"Taka—oh, Keith!” She says, sounding surprised. Keith isn’t sure why. They’ve been out here talking for a while, she really didn’t hear? “You didn’t hear us talking?” He asks incredulously, because Keith is not the type of person to let people get away with their own stupid-ness.

She looks at him irritatedly. She looks at him like this a lot, so much he looked up words that could fit this specific look. “Keith,” she chides, which is her permanent state of talk. “Do you remember our lesson about talking back?”

Usually if he says yes, she shuts up. He doesn’t, though. (Doesn’t remember the lesson, that is.) He opens his mouth to respond the wrong way, but the boy interjects before he can talk. “Keith here hurt his knee,” he says, and Miss Hodson’s eyebrows furrow. “Any bandaids in your office?”  
  
“Oh, dear, not in my office,” she says worriedly. “I’ll go fetch one from the nurse. You two make yourselves comfortable in my room, okay? Introduce yourselves and everything. What a lovely coincidence…”  
  
Keith strains his ears to pick up on her mumbling as she walks to the nurse, but he gives up as the boy clears his throat. “Hey, bud,” he says, and pokes a thumb inside of the door. “Let’s go inside, yeah? We can talk a little.”  
  
“Okay,” Keith says, but hesitates before he sits down. “What’s your name?”  
  
He smiles again. It’s bright. It hurts. Keith wonders if his name is Sunlight with a capital ‘S’. “Shiro,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”

 

* * *

 

 

“I wish we could get ice cream more,” Keith says.

Shiro leans his head on his palm and swirls his straw around in his milkshake. “That would be cool,” he says, “But you know you aren’t supposed to have that much sugar all the time. Imagine if we could, though. We could have ice cream for every meal.”  
  
Three months ago, he met his little brother. He is black-haired and red-cheeked and cherubic when he glares at you. He wears the same pair of black sports sneakers every day and reminisces about the hat he lost in the cafeteria the day they met, and eats so much ice cream his body is 90% of the stuff, and sometimes he puts his head down on Shiro’s lap and closes his eyes but doesn’t sleep, just talks about stuff that’s not important but “maybe should be”.

“I wish I could have ice cream for every meal,” Keith says. “What if we had spacesuits that could let us eat ice cream all the time? It would have a special mouth, and this tube that connects to outside, and you just eat a bunch of ice cream if it’s whatever tube.”

Shiro plays along. “You could have a Sunday space suit for chocolate ice cream,” he says. “And a Thursday one for lemon sorbet.”  
  
“My favorite would be Monday because it would be strawberry,” he says matter-of-factly. One of Shiro’s favorite things is studying his little face and watching all of the threads connect in his head.

“Did you know the strawberry isn’t actually a berry?” Shiro says.

“Then what is it?” Keith asks. “That’s like saying a coconut isn’t a nut.”  
  
“It kind of isn’t,” Shiro informs him, very importantly, and Keith makes a little whiny noise and slams his fist down on the table. His strawberry ice cream drips down the side of his cone, so naturally, he starts destroying it before it can spread further. “Then nothing is right,” he says, between a mouthful of his cone.

“Well,” Shiro says, “Can you name something that has a perfect name to what it is?”  
  
“A dog’s a dog,” Keith says. Shiro laughs and leans forward on his arm, his head flopping sideways as he sticks his spoon in his mouth, waiting for his ice cream to melt before he talks around his spoon. “Not like that, dummy,” he chastises. “Not something that perfect. Something like strawberry or coconut.”  
  
“Blueberry,” Keith says.  
  
“You are so difficult,” Shiro exclaims loudly, mimicking one of the workers at his group home—Miss Hodson?—as he takes ice cream onto his spoon and dips it onto Keith’s nose. He shrieks and starts batting at the chocolate blob until his hands get all sticky, and then he wipes them on the tablecloth, which Keith doesn’t comment on, because it’s plastic.

“Being not difficult is boring,” he claims. Shiro thinks he’s a little right. Keith isn’t difficult—he just needs a little help. And Shiro had seen that, as well as a sixteen-year-old can see it, because he was difficult, too, when he lost people he loved.

And even though everyone’s in a constant cycle of losing things they love—GPAs and grandparents and homes and friends—nobody ever calls a polite, trustworthy kid who knows how to hide their turmoil difficult, because even with the claims that it’s just a descriptor and nothing more, it’s inherently negative.

A good kid snaps, unloads their anguish, and they are difficult.

And when the entire world’s perception of you is negative, because of something you can’t help—something you were never helped for—suddenly, you start to believe it.

You become _difficult_ and a _troublemaker_ and a _misguided teen_ because that’s what happens when you’re left to dry after never being in the water.

Shiro signed up for the big brother program offered at the Garrison—connected to a local orphanage—three months ago, but it wasn’t for the community service points. He knew what it was like to be the asshole because you couldn’t help it. His illness made him like that—always a little snippy, always trying a little too hard.

He signed up to be the helper instead of the helped for once, he thinks—looking at Keith—but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. He’s both. They’re both. And it’s much better when you know you have so much to gain.

“Shiro?” Keith asks. “I think we’re that.”

“We’re what?” Shiro asks.

“Not a perfect name to what it is or whatever,” he responds, “But, like, strawberries and stuff. More like a coconut. We’re a coconut because we’re brothers, but not really. But we’re basically brothers.”

  
Shiro grabs his napkin and wonders if he has to use it to blot his tears, but he just wipes off Keith’s mouth and folds it into his empty ice cream container. “Yeah, bud,” he says. “We are.”

 

* * *

 

They have this dream routine.

It’s about space.

Keith knows where Shiro goes to school, mostly because he sneaks him onto the abandoned flight tracks near it to help him learn to fly. The building, though, it’s the big one they went on a field trip to once, the one for aspiring astronauts and space-folk. He asked if future aliens could go to the Galaxy Garrison too, to learn how to live on other planets, but his teachers thought he was kidding.

Joke's on them. He, well, wasn’t. He may have been a quiet and traumatized little nine year old, but he was anything but stupid—and this isn’t just his own ego talking. Shiro tells him he was really smart when he was nine, too, and they have a promise that Shiro would _never_ lie to him (especially about extra ice cream, which sparked the whole conversation).

Their daydream is this: when Keith climbs into his rickety old bed at the home and Shiro climbs into his tiny bottom bunk at his dorm, they call each other and review their daydream-world and what they’re going to do in space in their dreams tonight.

Yesterday night, they decided to dream about meeting with the diplomat of a very evil alien race called the Tonbers, to see if they were worth making an alliance with to fight against the even _more_ evil Insigo. Keith’s planning on telling him that he’s decided that yes, they are, later tonight, but fate’s on his side and he sees Shiro in the cafeteria when he walks down in the morning.

“ _Shiro_!” He runs over from the other side of the cafeteria and hugs him, and Shiro picks him up and spins him, dropping him on the other side of the door. A bunch of kids are staring, but they don’t look that related or anything, so they must just be confused why that weirdo Keith’s assigned mentor is still hanging out with him even though the year’s already passed.

Keith’s confused about it too. He actually asked, once, with advice from Shiro—because he says it’s not worth being quiet when you have so much stuff going on inside you. He said there was a reason people lit fireworks on fire, and it was the same reason people like him and Keith ask questions and are curious. Keith thought that was cool, so he was a question-asker and asked Shiro if they could go to the aquarium instead of the museum like he was planning (because Shiro is a big nerd).

“Hey, Keith,” he says, ruffling his hair. “I’m actually gonna meet with some of your supervisors. I wanna ask them a kind of important question.”  
  
“Oh,” Keith says, and his chest very weirdly deflates. “What? Are you leaving?”  
  
“What? Come on, of course not,” Shiro says, looking shocked at the accusation. Keith rocks on the balls of his feet sheepishly and pulls them aside so they don’t block the entrance of the cafeteria. “Sorry,” he says. “But I don’t know what else you would talk to them about.”  
  
“Well,” he says, and looks nervous. “If it goes over well, I’ll tell you.”  
  
“If it doesn’t?”  
  
“You know I’ll still tell you,” Shiro snickers, and pushes the tip of Keith’s nose up as he crosses his eyes. “Oink,” he snorts.

“Oink,” Shiro repeats—it’s a weird thing they started doing after too much ice cream and Keith getting scared at horror movies—but there’s none of his usual energy into it. “How about you have breakfast and I go talk to Miss Hodson and tell you the deal after?”  
  
“Fine,” Keith says. “See you later.”  
  
“See you later,” Shiro says, and Keith waits about ten seconds before he peeks around the corner, having not moved an inch into the direction of the breakfast lines. And then, in the span of two seconds (wasting his time!) a kid cuts in front of him, rubs his eyes sleepily and asks, “What the heck are you doing?”  
  
“I have to go,” Keith says. “Can you move?”  
  
“You need some friends, Keith,” he says loudly. “You can’t hang out with that guy all the time. He’s just your mentor. My big brother finished his year and left ‘cause he got his points. He must be getting extra points.”  
  
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Theo,” Keith says, a little rudely, and then, “Sorry.” He wonders if Shiro would be proud.

Maybe he would, but he definitely wouldn’t be proud at Keith tracking him down (not that hard, he’s just in Miss Hodson’s room) and sticking his ear under the door as quietly as he can, trying to listen in.

“—Good for him,” Shiro says urgently, sounding like he’s finished some sort of lecture. Keith could hear faint traces when he creeped outside of the door. He bites his lip and shoves his head even closer, so that he hears the sound of Shiro taking a seat.

“Takashi,” Miss Hodson says, and Keith wonders about that for a second—why Shiro prefers Shiro, not Takashi. Keith reckons if he had a last name as cool as Shirogane he’d go by a variation of it too, though, so it’s really not that big of a deal. “It makes me very happy to see you so close to him even after the experience ended, because Keith really doesn’t have anyone. A lot of these kids here don’t, but he really just… is very bad at socializing.”  
  
“That’s not his fault,” Shiro says defensively.  
  
“I know it’s not his fault,” Miss Hodson says carefully, “But we’ve been trying everything to get him to socialize, and it’s not—”  
  
“Why do you have to try more?” Shiro asks. “He seems much happier. I understand the sentiment of trying until you find something that sticks, but here it is. He and I are very close.”  
  
“He is much happier, and we don’t intend on splitting you apart or anything for now,” Miss Hodson says. “But you can’t deny it’s not going to happen. We need to make sure that he stays happy. When are you going off to college, Takashi? Without you, he’ll be completely lost.”  
  
“I really think the Garrison could help him stay that way,” Shiro says. He doesn’t say anything about the college comment. “He’s my little brother, you know? I see him and I think about how I wish somebody had seen my potential and helped me out when I was his age. Space is the one thing he’s just so, so passionate in and I think it’s important to help that grow—and I could keep an eye on him.”  
  
“Takashi, I agree with you wholeheartedly, don’t get me wrong,” Miss Hodson starts. This sounds an awful lot like a ‘but’ statement. He learned about those in English. They’re excuses. “But—”  
  
Ah. He was right.

“But, there’s no way for him to go to a boarding school while residing at an orphanage. He’d need a legal guardian.”  
  
Shiro doesn’t talk for a moment. “Takashi?”  
  
“I could do it,” he says quietly. “I could sign up. I'm eighteen.”  
  
Miss Hodson sounds taken aback. “To—to be his legal guardian? No. That's borderline impossible. You don’t fulfill all of the conditions.”  
  
“Thank you, Miss Hodson,” Shiro says. His voice is like a knife on a honing steel. “We’ll be seeing each other again.”

 

* * *

 

Later, Shiro takes him on a field trip.

“Do you like it?” He asks Keith. They’re standing outside of the Garrison, and it’s big, coated in sunset colors. It’s deep in the desert, hidden by grasses and secrets and promises, sticking out like a sore thumb from dry dirt and damp sand. “Do you think you’d be happy here?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Keith admits, uneasily. Boarding schools are different than orphanages. Orphanages are different from everywhere—they’re a slice of a different world, and Keith’s had to occupy them his entire life. He really is his own type of alien. “Just send me back to the home. I don’t know if I’m good enough for it.”  
  
“Keith,” Shiro says, and plants a hand on his shoulder. “The standard is only there for you to defy it, okay? Being _good enough_ isn’t just being talented and reaching their level—and you know you could pass their entrance tests, we’ve been doing it for ages. It’s about being what they’ve never seen before.”  
  
“Am I like that?” Keith asks shyly. “You think I’m that good?”  
  
“I _know_ you’re that good,” Shiro tells him. “You come along once a lifetime.”

“Just me?” Keith asks. “Or people like me?”  
  
“Just you,” Shiro says. His eyes are glittering with pride.

 

* * *

 

It’s dumb, okay?

  
It’s dumb. Shiro knows it’s dumb. He is very good at making mistakes and erasing them, but that doesn’t make it okay for him to make the mistake in the first place. He shoves his face into his couch pillow, waiting for Keith to let himself in through the door with the key Shiro had given him.

  
He waits a bit longer, and then he can hear Keith humming raspily outside of the door and opening it, keys jingling. He sighs louder into his pillow to get his attention, only satisfied when he hears Keith lock the door.

“Hello, dead man,” he says. “What’s wrong?”  
  
Shiro mutters his response into the pillow. Usually, he would not condone Keith breaking out of the dorms of the Galaxy Garrison after hours, but tonight is an exception, because he’s made perhaps the worst mistake of a lifetime. It involves Adam and Shiro’s heart.

He’s so fucking happy, things are falling apart.

“English, please,” Keith says.   
  
Shiro flips over and studies him. He’s sitting on the edge of the couch, arms crossed, wearing those stupid fingerless gloves. “I’m going to get one thing straight,” Shiro says, and raises a single pointer finger. “I am not supporting you breaking out of the Galaxy Garrison. I just needed emotional support. I’ll give you an excuse tomorrow but that’s it. You’re lucky they love me.”  
  
“You’re lucky I love you, dumbass,” Keith says. “Get talking.”  
  
“Hey,” Shiro says. “Watch yourself. I’m told you haven’t been showing up for classes?”  
  
Keith’s nonchalant half-smile turns into a sneer. “Not really my cup of tea,” he says shortly, as if this is any type of excuse. “Your coworkers are snitches.”  
  
Shiro sits up. He did not bust his ass for Keith to slack off on his education like this. “How about you talk me through that?” He asks, and then doesn’t give him an option to—and Keith knows his tricks, so he doesn’t even try to reply. “Classes are not _anybody’s_ cup of tea. But I want to see you make an effort, Keith.”  
  
“I _do_ make an effort,” Keith says. “I love flying. During the sims and practice I’m the most in my element. I just don’t care about anything else. I came to fly. Not associate with my classmates in _group activities_.”

“What is your problem with your classmates?” Shiro asks incredulously. “They all seem so—I don’t know, nice. With a lot of potential. You just have ridiculously high standards.”  
  
“Or absolutely none at all,” Keith pipes in. “Which means nobody has to fill them.”  
  
“Who’s the one that follows you around a lot?”  
  
“Who?” Keith says, and screws his face up. “McClain? Yeah, if you ignore him he goes away. He’s just—I don’t know. He just kind of tags along to beat me in stuff.”  
  
“Maybe you should talk to him,” Shiro offers.  
  
“No,” Keith says, like he hadn’t even heard the question—just knew his response.  
  
“His friends seem very sweet,” Shiro says, tilting his head. “I’ve heard good things about that kid Hunk. Apparently he’s very welcoming.”   
  
“Cool,” Keith says stubbornly. Shiro huffs and gives up.

“Well, fine. Don’t talk to anyone. That just always helped me with my studies,” Shiro says, his voice softening. “I just want you to be happy. Being a pilot isn’t just about knowing how to fly. You have to learn about space, and you need to keep your formal education. I don’t want to see you slip up after all of our battles to get here, okay?”  
  
Keith squirms a little. “Fine,” he says in a small voice. “I’ll try to go to some. For you.”  
  
Shiro smiles at him. “Oink,” he says, trying to lighten the mood.

Keith rolls his eyes. “I’m not _eleven_ , Shiro.”  
  
“Don’t act all high and mighty about childhood rituals,” Shiro says, sounding extra offended to get his message across. “I mean, really, how are you expecting to fight the Insigo if you don’t show up to any classes?”  
  
Keith’s eyes dart up, smiling even though his mouth is just twitching. “How do you remember that?” He says incredulously. “You indulging my weird daydreams when I was little is the only reason I don’t _completely_ hate myself today. Call it childhood conditioning.”  
  
“Or something,” Shiro says. “What do you mean, _indulging you_? At first it was, but then I got very involved.”  
  
“Oh, yeah?” Keith asks. “Was it when I thought you up an alien boyfriend?”  
  
Shiro laughs. “No, actually,” he admits. “It was when we went to the Palace of the Nineteen Golden Thrones and it turned out your _half-sister_ was supposed to have inherited the throne, not you, so your prophecies had been switched the entire time and you needed to uncover the truth and see if she was still alive. Shit, that was a flawless plotline.”  
  
“Oh, absolutely,” Keith says, looking amused. And then, in his true spoilsport nature, he asks, “What did you want to talk to me about?”  
  
Strangely enough, Shiro doesn’t feel as shit anymore. Talking to Keith cheers him up. “Adam and I,” he says, and pauses. “God, it’s complicated.”  
  
“Well, go ahead,” Keith beckons.

Shiro sighs. “He told me he loves me, but—”  
  
“Terrible news,” Keith interrupts, dryly.

“No, let me finish,” Shiro says. “We were at the abandoned flight center, looking at this old module and wondering why they had retired it, and he turns around and tells me he has a secret. So we sit down, and he tells me that—he’s fully in love with me, not just loves me, and he takes my hand, and I completely freeze up.”  
  
“The world is in anarchy,” Keith continues. “Chaos thrives. Nobody is safe. Shiro fucking froze up when the love of his life told him he returned the feelings. Who could have guessed he’d have such a _human reaction_?”  
  
“Don’t be like that,” Shiro snaps. “He’s—I swear, I made him think I _didn’t_ when I responded.”  
  
“But you did respond?” Keith asks. Shiro nods weakly. “Well, there you go! Why aren’t you celebrating? Should I have brought champagne?”  
  
“Do you drink?” He manages to reply.

“This seems like the precise opposite of a mistake, Shiro,” Keith says, completely ignoring his question.  “What did you decide? Are you dating?”  
  
Shiro’s quiet. Because, to be honest, he’s bursting. He’s never been this happy in his life—never truly been so enamoured with someone, he couldn’t imagine himself without them next to him. He and Adam used to joke about reinventing the words flight partners, but God, if it isn’t true. It’s what it feels like.

Even _boyfriend_ doesn’t feel right. Even though he did ask Adam out, and that’s the label he’s going to work toward, but still—

Still—

Still—

“What’s wrong with me?” Shiro asks miserably. His throat is holding back all of his tears. He’s not going to cry in front of Keith, because even though it wouldn’t be the first time, he just hates to. Keith regards him curiously and leans down on the floor so they’re face-to-face. “This is everything I wanted—why is it—why am I acting like a bad thing has happened? It’s not a mistake… I know it’s not a mistake…”  
  
Very surprisingly, Keith leans forward and hugs him, letting Shiro rest his head into the crook of his neck like he used to do when he needed comfort. “Hey, it’s okay,” he says. “Sorry for being an asshole. It’s a lot, you know? He means a lot to you. You don’t want to fuck it up.”  
  
“I don’t want to fuck it up,” Shiro whispers. It’s almost a mantra.

“And you’re trying to find an excuse to feel bad about something so happy,” Keith says. “Not an—you just know it’s too good to be true. Do you feel like that?”  
  
Shiro’s heart feels squeezed by fists. He nods a little. “Yeah.”  
  
“Don’t,” Keith says firmly.

Shiro shakes his head and pulls away, wiping away a few ridiculous tears. “I shouldn’t be crying,” he says, almost to himself. “I should be happy. I was happy, I was so happy, but I should have stayed happy.”  
  
“Shiro,” Keith says. “Talk to me. Not yourself.”  
  
Shiro looks up.

“I’m here for you,” he reminds, very quietly. Shiro wonders if anybody else has ever seen this side of him. “And I know what you’re feeling. As much as I can, I’m feeling it. There’s parts of relationships you have to accept and you can’t accept them all happy, I think, not that I’m an expert, but you’re okay. I promise.”  
  
Shiro nods and wipes his nose. Maybe—no, not maybe, because it will be okay. He repeats it over and over again. _It will be okay. It will be okay_. It will be okay because now, he has the opportunity to hold Adam and never let go, and perhaps these tears—maybe they can help him realize what that means, how to truly hold on tight.

Keith gives him a little tap on the arm and hoists himself on the couch next to him. “You know,” he says, “I wanted to be you, when I was little.”  
  
He looks sideways at Keith. “Really?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says.

Shiro smiles into his lap and claps a hand on his shoulder. “That’s really so flattering, Keith, thank you,” he says. “I’m honored. But something tells me you’ll be a better pilot than I could ever be.”  
  
“Oh, not about the piloting,” Keith says. “Or maybe—well, not that much about the piloting. Some of it. I just wanted a cute boyfriend.”  
  
Shiro punches him in the arm.

“Okay, being serious,” Keith says, rubbing his arm, “It was also just—your kindness and bravery and the fact that you were everything I was except not the bad parts of me. The bad parts of me, but—made good.”  
  
“There’s no bad parts of you,” Shiro sniffles. “Be quiet. Don’t put yourself down.”

“I’m not putting myself down,” Keith says. “Come on. Who taught me otherwise?”  
  
Shiro knows where he’s coming from. It hadn’t been obvious until they’d become closer—until he’d really started seeing parts of himself in Keith, seeing how he could rise so high with proper direction, become a man Shiro wants to see in the world. And he has.

And that, perhaps, is enough.


End file.
